Welcome to City Cyber Research

Welcome to City Cyber Research.com. This website aims to provide information about a new research project around young people and their views on social media, digital communications and the Internet. The research is being funded by a three-year grant from City University’s Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism (CLJJ).

These pages should provide all the information needed by students, parents, teachers and anyone else who may be involved in the project to find out everything they need to know. It is important that anyone who might be taking part in this research knows what will be involved and that I can answer any questions they may have. If you’re under 18 years old, it is also important your parent(s) and/or guardian(s) also know about the research.

Use the headings at the top of the page to guide you through the website and click ‘Contact’ if you would like to get in touch with me directly.

Below is some basic information about the project to get you started.

Thank you for visiting City Cyber Research.

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Research funding:

This three-year research project is funded by the Centre for Law, Justice and Journalism and is based in the Sociology Department at City University London. It is being led by Holly Powell-Jones (Holly.Powell-Jones@city.ac.uk.)

Research aims:

This research aims to investigate young people’s (ages 11-18) views about social media and cyber communications, with a particular interest in how notions of ‘risk’ and ‘responsibility’ might be applied to digital interaction. The longer-term aims of the research are to inform and influence policy-making within the fields of education, technology and law.

Research methods:

Research will take the form of interactive workshop sessions with students at Secondary schools. Sessions will be run with groups from different year groups (Years 7 – 13) within each school. The researcher will take handwritten participant-observation notes during and after each session. There may be an opportunity for students to take part in ‘follow-up’ focus group sessions at the analysis stage as well, to discuss their thoughts on any preliminary findings. There will be no audio or video recording during the workshops and neither the school, nor any of the individual students who take part, will be named in the final published results.

Research approach:

The researcher has extensive experience running workshop sessions of this kind in secondary schools. In 2013, she designed educational training on ‘Online and Social Media Law and Ethics’, which was given grant funding from the Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner to deliver in approx. 50 schools across Surrey. This project has since been re-commissioned for a further two years and has reached more than 10,000 students in total. As well as being a great opportunity for research, these workshop sessions also provide a chance for students to get free educational training about social media law and ethics from a professional expert. These sessions are designed to be interactive, stimulating and fun, as well as providing young people with a great opportunity to have their say about various digital media issues.

More information: Please use to the headings at the top of the page to help guide you through this website. If there’s anything you’d like to know that isn’t included on the site, or any questions you would like to ask me directly, you can get in touch by clicking ‘Contact’.